Apple Strudel

Flour, egg, water, oil, salt — that's the whole dough, and each one earns its place. Plain flour, nothing strong or "00" needed, because you're not after chew, you're after thinness; a weaker gluten network actually stretches more obligingly under your hands. The egg gives structure and a faint richness so the sheet doesn't taste like wallpaper paste. Oil — any oil with no smell of its own, so a neutral sunflower or light olive oil works, but skip anything that announces itself, like a peppery extra virgin — keeps the dough supple enough to pull thin without cracking. In a London kitchen, on an ordinary worktop with no kazan-sized table to stretch dough over, you won't get the translucent, newspaper-readable-through-it sheet some bakers manage. Accept that. Roll it as thin as your rolling pin and nerve allow, and if it tears, patch it — the folded edges and the log shape hide small sins.

Apples: you want ones that hold shape under heat rather than collapse to mush, something firmer and slightly tart — a Bramley will break down into a soft purée (lovely for pie, wrong here), so reach for something like Braeburn or Granny Smith instead, anything with backbone. The lemon zest isn't there for flavour alone — it also slows the apple's browning and cuts the sweetness, because sugar alone makes this cloying rather than pleasant. Raisins plumped in rum do double duty: the alcohol pulls moisture into them so they don't stay hard little pellets in the finished bake, and rum's warmth (you can swap in dark rum, brandy, or just more apple juice if you're keeping it dry) keeps the filling from tasting one-note sweet.

Pine nuts toasted dry in the pan, no oil — because they're already fat-rich, their own oil will release and toast them from inside once the pan's hot enough to make them smell nutty rather than just warm. That smell is your cue, not a clock. Let them cool before adding to the filling or they'll keep cooking in residual heat and go from gold to bitter, the same ginger-to-burnt line that catches out onions left one minute too long. No pine nuts in the cupboard — walnuts or almonds, chopped small, do the same job: textural contrast against soft fruit.

Butter brushed onto the dough before baking, and again partway through, is what gives you colour and shatter on the crust — butter browns through the Maillard reaction at a temperature plain dough brushed with nothing would just pale and dry out at. Icing sugar at the end is purely for the eye and a last hit of sweetness on the tongue; it has no structural job, so dust it only once the strudel's fully cool, otherwise it melts into sadness instead of sitting as a fine white coat.

On the oven: starting hotter (180°C) sets the pastry and starts the colour, then dropping to 170°C lets the inside finish cooking through without the crust going past gold into bitter dark brown. Judge it the way you'd judge anything baked in a British oven that runs its own slightly eccentric temperature — not by the clock on the wall but by colour: deep amber-gold, no paler, and firm when you tap it, not still soft and yielding like underbaked bread.

Feeds six as a proper pudding slice, more if it's just a cup of tea and a sliver alongside it — and tea with milk, if we're honest about what it'll be served with here, cuts right through the sweetness, same job the lemon zest is doing inside the strudel itself.